Archives for December 2009

Did the ADAs, the FDA, the Department of Agriculture and their major funders and lobbyists in the grain and pharmaceutical industries tie you to the Whipping Post in 2009 and beyond, going back forever?

Just like Greg Allman?

You don’t have to be tied up in 2010. And there’s my end of year message. (Though a few have requested a Rush number and I hate to disappoint, and so…)

That’s Lierre Keith, describing the email she gets from her book, The Vegetarian Myth (see previous link for reviews & to get the book). She’s talking about those 80% of vegetarians and vegans who fan-mail her; those relatively new to it (all life is style, nowadays), suffering from anxiety and depression.

Good for you, Lierre: best of all, cut off or cull the supply of new victims; double-edge-sword, create advocates for sensible eating as added leverage against The Myth! Many of the old-timers will sacrifice their own health for the sake of misery-loves-company. They confuse misery and bliss — like a damaged soul confuses love & hate.

Alright, let’s just admit there’s selection bias here. Certainly there are vegetarians and vegans who are fortunate — and I wish them well — to have no such problems, and they aren’t emailing Lierre. Prolly not fans of her book, either.

But the fact is there are those who suffer. And there’re those commenting on this blog and elsewhere, proclaiming how meat eating is so satisfying for them. That means something simple: the argument that anyone and everyone ought to Go Vegan! is falsified. It should end. No, they do not have and so certainly should not proclaim to have the diet to end all diets. And Paleos should not claim that either. Everyone is individual. People fare differently; Paleo is merely an excellent place to start. Our job is to convince them it’s the best place to start. That’s how we got here, evolved, so give that a college try, first.

Oh, I almost forgot. That bit is at around 56 minutes into her interview with Sean Croxton, right here. Go listen.

Let’s suppose that Mercader’s dating estimates are correct. Let’s also suppose that the tools Mercader tested had indeed been used to prepare food, as the presence of other food residues suggest. First off, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the sorghum was also used as food. Tools, for prehistoric humans (if not for moderns as well) needed to serve multiple purposes, supporting not just food preparation but shelter construction and other daily living tasks. As one archeologist skeptic, Curtis Marean of Arizona State University in Tempe, explains, grasses were regular parts of “bedding” and “kindling.” Another critic, Huw Barton from the University of Leicester, questions Mercader’s assumption that the sorghum had been used for food based on the curious presence of the residue on tools not associated with food preparation, including drills.

Next up is the always pointed & frank Dr. Kurt Harris, MD. While he doesn’t take on this piece of nonsense garbage that I and Mark did — probably because it’s just too stupid for his tastes — he takes on grains themselves: as poison garbage. And, too, he takes on the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) for their silly insistence on what should really be termed ‘proper preparation of poison.’ Now, I certainly don’t want to become and enemy of WAPF, I’ve linked to many of their articles many times, and Price, as Kurt says, was a giant in nutrition. But I do not get this insistence on "neutralizing" what’s just toxic poison.

The larger point is this – The whole exercise of finding a way to justify eating gluten grains is beyond pointless.

We have here a class of plant proteins derived from the seeds of plants that do not want to be eaten and that we did not evolve eating – cereal grains. These gliadin proteins (glutenins and gliadins) have known effects on gut permeability even in those without celiac disease via the innate immune response. These effects are in addition to those of wheat germ agglutinin (WGA), a secondary plant compound found in wheat germ that is elaborated solely to discourage consumption of seeds by animals.

The WAPF position is that, rather than simply avoiding eating things with gluten, we should soak, sprout and ferment these noxious plant seeds and eat them anyway, in hopes that our preparation has hydrolyzed enough of the gluten to make short enough peptides that the immunogenicity is diminished.

I suggest wheat advocates who worship tradition pay for access to this short report published in GUT – I did – and then explain why a celiac, or indeed anyone with a gut should expose themselves to even microgram amounts of incompletely hydrolysed gluten when 5 out of 6 people without evidence of CS (Celiac Sprue) have evidence of an abnormal innate immune response using a highly sensitive assay.

[…]

You can live fine with zero gluten grains in your diet. Wheat flour is vitamin poor, has no nutritious fat that isn’t rancid, and the proteins in it are incomplete in their amino acid complement. There is absolutely no upside to eating wheat if you are not starving

So why engineer some convoluted preparation ritual in order to eat it? Why not just avoid it?

At any rate, see Kurt’s post to get the real scoop on what’s going on with grains, gluten in particular. And the comments have to be seen to be believed. Also in the comments, Kurt demonstrates why dairy is not at all in the same category as grains from an evolutionary, Paleo diet standpoint.

Last year while vacationing up here at the cabin, I did a dozen reasonably substantive posts in one day — for fun (alcohol being a function of the last few, and just getting the last off by midnight — make sure to check out LSD Chicken). Here’s the wrap up post with the links to all 12.

This year I’m going to do something different. I’ve noted from emails received from so may new readers (500%+ at least from last year) that while they have gone through archives and read past stuff, they may not have gotten what I think are the best. So. I’m going to resurrect a choice few over the next few days, perhaps three or four per day.

Hope that doesn’t irritate the long-timers, but at least you know why. Heres’ the two I highlighted earlier to Facebook friends & Twitter followers.

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I'm Richard Nikoley. Free the Animal began in 2003, and as of 2017, contains over 4,500 posts and 100,000 comments from readers. I cover a lot of ground, blogging what I wish...from health, diet, and lifestyle to philosophy, politics, social issues, and cryptocurrency. I celebrate the audacity and hubris to live by your own exclusive authority and take your own chances in life. [Read more...]

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